Road upgrades near Gorge Amphitheater on schedule

GEORGE — The asphalt is going down on sections of Silica Road Northwest and Southwest and West Baseline Road near the Gorge Amphitheater. Grant County Engineer David Bren said the project is on schedule.

“They’re paving already,” Bren said. 

Rains caused some delays, he said, but the project should be finished by the end of April at the latest.

“We’re hoping that by the middle of this month, we’ll be substantially complete,” Bren said. 

Crews were repaving the road Wednesday morning south of the intersection of Silica Road Southwest and Sunland Road. The old surface has been ground down, with additional rock and gravel added to the shoulders. Asphalt was being laid over the existing base. 

Traffic was sparse on a weekday morning, but is subject to flagger control and a pilot car in the construction area. 

That section of Silica Road is being widened as part of a bigger project to alleviate some of the traffic congestion on concert weekends at the Gorge Amphitheater. 

Bren said a section of Silica Road SW, about a mile, will be widened to three lanes. West Baseline Road east of Silica Road also will be widened for about a mile, and a third lane added. Silica Road between Sunland Road and Road 1 Northwest is already three lanes and will get a new coating of asphalt over its existing surface.

The paving work should finish early next week, Bren said. Rainy weather does affect paving, and rain is forecast for two to three days, but then conditions are forecast to improve to weather that’s good for paving.

“It’s really three projects,” Bren said of the work around the amphitheater. Funding is coming from three different sources.

The section of Silica Road that’s getting a third lane is being funded through the county’s real estate excise tax at a cost of about $1 million, according to the county’s six-year road plan. Bren said in an earlier interview that it’s difficult to get state or federal funding to widen existing roads or build new ones. Because resurfacing the three-lane section of Silica Road is an improvement to an existing road, county officials received a federal grant of about $1.1 million.

Widening and resurfacing West Baseline is being paid for by a $600,000 grant from the county’s Lodging Tax Advisory Committee.  

The project will be complete in time for the amphitheater concert season, but Bren said traffic patterns will be affected by construction work on the Vantage Bridge. One lane on the bridge will be closed, and speeds reduced, most of the time from June through October while crews work on upgrading the bridge deck. The Vantage Bridge project is expected to last four years.

“It’s going to be very different for the next four years,” Bren said of traffic around the amphitheater.

Other road projects

Work will be continuing on Road 9 Northwest between Dodson Road and State Route 283 after rain exposed an unforeseen problem and temporarily closed down construction. The subsoil along one section of the road was composed of materials that didn’t like rain.

‘“It turned into a mud bog,” Bren said. “A long length of it.” 

County officials prefer to keep at least one lane open for traffic during a road project, but that was impossible, Bren said. 

“We do not like to close roads,” he said. “(But) we were worried about cars getting stuck in the middle of the road.” 

Crews will have to excavate the old roadbed before construction work can start again. 

“Once we get a good dry spell we can scoop out all of that bad material and refill it with good material,” Bren said. 

Even with the delay the road should be completed on schedule, he said. Completion is scheduled in July. 

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.

    Workers check the depth of new asphalt along Silica Road. The road is getting widened and paved as part of a larger project to improve traffic flow around the Gorge Amphitheater.
  

    Traffic is being regulated with flaggers and pilot cars through the project area around the Gorge Amphitheater.